As a founder member of Mystery Women in 1997, promoting Crime Fiction has always been my passion.
Following the closure of Mystery Women, a new group was formed on 30th January 2012 promoting crime fiction.
New reviews are posted daily, but to search for earlier reviews please click on the Mystery People link below and select 'reviews' from the welcome page. This will display an alphabetic option for you to find the review you would like to read

Recent Events

For PREVIOUS REVIEWS- Click on MYSTERY PEOPLE below -

Sunday, 6 December 2015

‘A Death in the Dales’ by Frances Brody

Published
by Piatkus, 1 October 2015. ISBN: 978-0-349-40656-5

Kate
Shackleton was widowed in the 1914-1918 war. After the war she spent some years
trying to discover if her doctor husband was really dead or missing, and, if he
was dead, to find out the circumstances of his death. Eight years later she has
come to terms with her loss and uses the skills she developed when searching
for the truth about her husband to become a Private Investigator. Although she
specialises in finding missing people, she has been involved with many cases of
murder. However, in 1926, Kate is taking a fortnight's holiday in a remote
Yorkshire village. She has two reasons for this: to aid the recovery of her
niece, Harriet, who has just come out of hospital, having survived diphtheria;
and to spend more time with Dr Lucian Simonson and discover whether they are
well enough suited to marry. The cottage that Kate and Harriet are staying in
belongs to Lucian, who inherited it from the aunt who brought him up.

Hopes of a peaceful holiday are
swiftly put to flight. Within minutes of arriving at the cottage Kate is
approached by Bradley Wigglesworth, the local apothecary and a close friend of
Lucian's late aunt, Freda Simonson. Ten years ago, in the middle of the war,
Freda had witnessed the murder of a local publican. She knew that the young
Irishman who was arrested and tried for the crime was innocent, but her
testimony was disregarded. She mourned the young man's unjust execution for the
rest of her life and, when she heard about Kate's profession, had hoped to meet
her and ask her to discover the truth. Unfortunately, she died before this
happened. Mr Wigglesworth gives Kate all the documents Freda had collected
about the case and, although Kate knows that her stirring up the past will
cause ill-feeling in the village, she feels a need to continue the work of a
woman she never met and yet feels drawn to.

Soon this decade old mystery is
supplemented by three very current problems: the disappearance of a young boy
who had been sent to work at one of the hill farms; the mysterious death of
another farmer; and a request for Kate to act as an intermediary in a potential
blackmail case. Despite Harriet's excellent efforts to help with the investigations,
Kate is very grateful when her assistant, Sykes, and her housekeeper, Mrs
Sugden, arrive to supply their professional aid.

A Death in the Dales
is the eighth Kate Shackleton mystery and it is a series that gets stronger all
the time. The central characters are well drawn and appealing, and the
opportunity for Harriet to share more of the action is a great addition. The
strands of the plots are woven together with skill and make a convincing
conclusion. The historical background is beautifully portrayed, without
becoming obtrusive, and is intrinsic in informing the characters and events of
the time.

A Death in the Dales
is a thoroughly enjoyable book and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

------

Reviewer: Carol Westron

Frances Brodyis
a pseudonym of Frances McNeil who lives in Leeds where she was born and grew
up. She worked in the USA as a secretary in Washington DC and New York. Frances
studied at Ruskin College, Oxford and read English Literature and History at
York University.Starting her writing life in radio, she has written scripts for
television and theatre. Frances turned to crime for her first novel, Dying
in the Wool, set on the outskirts of Bradford, Yorkshire in the
1920s.Four further books have followed
featuring Kate Shackleton,

http://www.francesbrody.com/

Carol Westronis a successful
short story writer and a Creative Writing teacher.She is the moderator for the cosy/historical
crime panel, The Deadly Dames.Her crime
novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.The Terminal Velocity of Cats is the
first in her Scene of Crimes novels, was published July 2013. Her second book About the Children was published in May
2014.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

From an early age I have been a lover of crime fiction. Discovering like minded people at my first crime conference at St Hilda’s Oxford in 1997, I was delighted when asked to join a new group for the promotion of female crime writers. In 1998 I took over the running of the group, which I did for the next thirteen years.
During that time I organised countless events promoting crime writers and in particular new writers. But apart from the sheer joy of reading, ‘I actually love books, not just the writing, the plot or the characters, but the sheer joy of holding a book has never abated for me. The greatest gift of my life has been the ability to read'.